- careless
- careless adj Careless, heedless, thoughtless, inadvertent mean showing lack of concern or attention.Careless often implies the absence of such cares as responsibilities or worries; it then usually connotes casualness, spontaneity, and lightheartedness and carries little or no suggestion of culpability{
her careless refinement of manner was so different from the studied dignity and anxious courtesy of the actor-manager— Shaw
}{he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing room with the detachment of an invited guest— Wharton
}Often, however, the term implies a more or less culpable indifference which at its best is the product of independence or of concentration on other and more important things{raise all kinds of hope, careless of the disillusionment that will certainly follow— Hicks
}and at its worst is the result of laziness or negligence and manifests itself in blameworthy lack of pains or thought{a careless bookkeeper
}{a careless piece of work
}{careless errors
}Heedless also implies indifference, but it stresses inattentiveness or a failure to see, observe, take note of, or remark rather than laziness or negligence; the term often also connotes light- mindedness, frivolousness, or flightiness{heaps of flies . . . fell dead. . . . Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading. . . . Curious to consider how heedless flies are\—Dickens
}{discreetly heedless, thanks to her long association with nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion— Henry James
}Thoughtless may emphasize lack of reflection or of forethought{thoughtless of tomorrow and God— Guthrie
}More frequently it suggests lack of thoughtfulness or consideration for others{now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain— Wilde
}Inadvertent usually implies heedlessness; the term is rarely applied to persons or their minds but is used in qualifying their acts and especially such of their mistakes, errors, or blunders as ensue from heedlessness or inattention resulting from concentration on other things rather than from ignorance or intention{an inadvertent wakening of a person who is asleep
}{an inadvertent error in spelling or in pronunciation
}{they are in a bad fix . . . and sometimes with an inadvertent child or two to support— Rand
}Analogous words: *negligent, neglectful, lax, slack, remiss: casual, desultory, haphazard, *random, hit-or-miss, happy-go-luckyAntonyms: careful
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
